Future of Jag X-Type?

Ouch! What a comparison. What about getting a good older Jag when they were more obviously Jags. "And a spare as well" some would say!

The X Type is a restyled European Ford Mondeo. The S-Type is a restyled American Ford Contour.

Who cares what the cars were based on. The Contour was a very nice car for what a person paid, and the S Type is wonderful for what it is. The S Type has a brilliant suspension and a free revving V6 that is quite powerful. The X Type doesn't have the same quality of suspension that the S Type has, but it has a nice interior and drives very well. Also remember that the Mondeo won quite a few awards in Europe for being a great car before it got turned into the X -type.

Don't get hung up on what the platform also underlies. What you are buying is the car that you are seeing and driving and if you love it then it's the car for you. There is a lot of good in the X type. If you like it, go for it!

Its not to be discontinued Most modern mass production cars are built on a floorpan that is used by multiple models/makes, the specific manu then adds a bodyshell and various mechanical tweaks etc - very basically put -

Wait till the all-wheel drive Ford Fusion is available, then go for that. I am.

BTW, I still own my '71 XKE.

Al

Ford Fusion? I assume in the USA, the fusion is a decent sized high spec'd sedan (saloon) It is far from that in the UK, far far from it! I read somewhere (and I forget where, I read so much) that the X Type will indeed be replaced, with a similar line up to the current models (engine choice). Most of the changes will be mechanical ... a Jag has to look like a Jag, right?

The new Ford Mondeo (Contour in the USA?) is virtually production ready .... due out in 2006/7 ... date to be confirmed.

The 'new' X Type will use the new floorpan on which the new Mondeo is built (along with several other Ford?Mazda vehicles no doubt!)

I too have heard that the X-Type may be discontinued.

The real question is, given your budget, when you open your garage, what do you want to see there? Forget about the purists, the guys who say to get a "good older Jag," etc. etc. etc. If you say that every time you see an X-Type you "fall in love," then in sounds to me like you've found your car. If you feel that way about a Ford Fusion, then get one of those.

For me, it's my 2003 4.2 S-Type in British Racing Green. I love my car. :)

In the US, BTW, three year old S-Types are easily available for less than the price of a new X-Type. Buy for many people, there's nothing quite like having a new car.

Follow your heart.

Michael W. Chicago, IL, USA

Rubbish! Restyling means taking the existing car and changing its looks a bit. The X-type uses a modified, *shortened* version of the Mondeo floor pan, just picking up 6 "hard points". Some of the suspension and brake parts from the Mondeo were used as well, but remember that this Mondeo design never had AWD. The Ford Duratec V6 block was used as a *basis* for the engine, but it was strengthened and the innards are all Jaguar-designed (e.g. variable valve timing and variable length inlets). Aside from this and a few switches and filters, the entire car is a totally fresh design. The motoring press just ignored the facts for the sake of an eye-catching headline - as usual - and it has stuck. I don't remember them criticising the Audi TT because it is a re-bodied Golf, even when the car killed many of the early owners because of its handling defects.

The S-Type shares far more components with the US car that was used as a platform (I thought it was a Lincoln - surely not a Contour!) but the press never went to town on that one either.

If one is going to deride a car because of what it was "based on" then the original Ford Mustang was "just a Falcon".

I believe the S-Type was originally built on the Lincoln LS platform, whatever that means. The LS is a nice car, but having driven them quite a bit, I'd never think that one vehicle had anything to do with the other. I also recall reading that in 2003 the S-Type was "redesigned" with 70% of the components being new (vs the 2002).

Some folks like vintage cars, some like new ones. Some people prefer old houses to new contruction. Personally, I prefer old houses and new cars. :)

Michael W. Chicago, IL, USA

My post was lazy, and I apologize. The Mondeo platform does underlie the X-Type, but as I tried to point out the platform means nothing when you compare actual cars, and perhaps I didn't say that precisely enough, but you definitely drove the point home.

In rereading it, I did not mean to say that the Contour underlies the S Type. That's wrong. I was being snarky because when the S Type came out people made the same accusations about it being a restyled Ford because it used a reworked Contour engine. To the best of my knowledge the platform was developed uniquely for the Lincoln LS and the S Type. It has hence been heavily reworked and put under the Thunderbird and now the new Mustang.

Both of these platforms are fabulous, but just because the S Type and the Mustang share some chassis architecture does not make them the same car. They are like apples and oranges.

What I am still trying to say to the original poster is that just because Ford used an award winning chassis to base the X Type on does not make it a Mondeo. Cars are a lot more than their chassis architecture or their engine. Handling comes from so much more and driving the two would show the difference. Again my apologies for being lazy in my posting.

Everytime I see a S or X-type I think Taurus. i can't help it.

Def> My post was lazy, and I apologize. The Mondeo platform does underlie

I don't really care what platform the X-Type is based on, as long as parts will be readily available as they wear out. For example, is the 3.0 in the X the same engine as the 3.0 in the S-Type, or are they different? Also, I'm looking about 3 years down the road, anyway. Until my wife's SUV is paid off (34 to go @ $447.40.....)Even then, a new X-type would be out of the question. I'm thinking more like $20,000-23,000 for a used one 2 or 3 years old. Another problem is that I'm 100 miles (or 160Km, for our UK friends) from the nearest dealership. Since Jaguar only sells, what,

20,000 cars annually? in the US, there aren't that many dealerships.

Hazey - OK... understood, and apology accepted. I have owned a 3-litre X-type for over 3 years, and whilst I accept that it is not in the same class as the XJ and XK models it is still a fine car. I also have a Mondeo, and whilst they are also good cars there is no comparison between the two. The X-Type all-wheel drive is absolutely superb, with 60% of the torque fed to the back wheels in normal circumstances, and I've never been able to get a wheel to spin even on wet roads without DSC. The grip when accelerating hard round a sharp bend from very low speed is simply unbelievable when compared with FWD or RWD. My Mondeo has only 130bhp (100 less than the Jaguar) but it still produces understeer and some wheelspin in the same situation, and my wife's RWD 145bhp MX5 roadster (renowned for its superb handling) just goes into huge oversteer - even with its limited slip diff.

I'd still like an S-Type 'R' though.

Jaguar US sales for 2004+5 were around 76,000 for the 2 years combined -

20,000 S-Types and 32,000 X-Types. Most X-types would have been 3.0L, and I guess that the 4.2L S-Type would be more common. The 3.0 engines are more-or-less the same - the S-Type develops about 10bhp more, but that is more to do with the poorer breathing of the transverse-mounted X-type installation than anything else. Current X-Types are one of the most reliable cars you can buy - and top of recent owner satisfaction surveys, beating Lexus.

The reliability thing is good to hear. Conversely, Consumer Reports, a major Gospel that American carbuyers (not me) rely upon, says Jaguars are "much worse than average" but they don't like ANY cars unless it has a Honda or Toyota nameplate........I go by my own anecdotal experience anyway. Consumer Reports gives Volkswagen bad ratings, too, and they are very good cars........But Jaguars are much prettier...

Forget Consumer Reports. I never understood their ratings until they gave a positive rating to the Honda Odyssey when they were new. The car had a lot of teathing problems, and they were forced to explain their methodology. The reason that the same cars and car companies always get a good or bad rating is that 30% of their metric involves the company's past behavior in other models. So a company like Jaguar would take years to get over that entrenched "perception" which Consumer Reports puts into its rating. Just forget what they say.They're worthless for deciding whether a particular model is any good.

Have to diagree with you about VW though. The one that I owned back in the 80's was in a perpetual state of rattling itself apart from the day that I bought it new. It's the only car that I ever owned which dies on theside of the road, and it did it several times, and repairs were horribly expensive. This was quite a few years ago, and a friend of mine bought one in 1999. It was worse. His check engine light went on and never came off. The exhaust rusted out within two years, was as thick as paper, and cost $2,000 to repair. His exhaust manifold cracked within 18 months of ownership, and he never was able to get the dealer to fix it even though it was a warranty repair. I'm glad that you've had good luck with them, but I would buy a Yugo before I got another Vdub.

Km in the UK? we don't have those things over here. Load's of miles though.

"(or 160Km, for our UK friends)"

We use miles, just like yourselves .... just not pounds/ounces anymore!

Jaguar's 2005 total US sales was 45,875 There are currently 160 Jaguar dealerships in the US

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